Development of coreset of aromatic rice (Oryza sativa L. Indica) based on molecular and morphological diversity

Aromatic rice (Oryza sativa L. Indica) is popular among consumers. They provide significant economic benefit to producing countries as well as farmers. Aromatic germplasm is huge and diverse in terms of agro-morphological characters, grain types and aroma content. Development of a representative coreset of aromatic germplasm can be a good source for novel alleles identification and is required for its improvement. A collection of 552 aromatic accessions were screened for 40 DUS traits and 60 SSR markers. The data were processed in PowerCore software that implements the advanced M (or maximization) strategy using a modified heuristic algorithm and a coreset of 99 accessions was identified. The average Nei diversity and Shannon–Weaver diversity indices of the coreset were 0.635 and 0.823, representing the entire diversity of the collection. Statistical parameters like mean difference and variance difference were analysed to compare the mean and variance ratio between core and entire collections. Coreset has 3.45% mean difference and 14.4% variance difference. The coreset has 99.04% coincidence rate and 106.31% variable range which indicated the optimum properties of the coreset against the entire collection. This is the first attempt of making coreset of aromatic rice from larger germplasm.